Zupaysaurus RELOADED

["Nicholas Gardner" <ratites637@hotmail.com>]

Hi all,

I recently received a copy of the paper on Zupaysaurus rougieri (Arcucci & 
Coria 2003) from Tim Williams.  Another big thanks to Tim on that one.  
Anyway, Jaime (Headden) suggested running it in Dr. Holtz's matrix from his 
paper in GAIA (2000).  I did so, and I was surprised on how much there was 
to code, I thought it was less complete than that.  A principle issue in 
coding was that only the skull was illustrated well.  Cervicals and some 
hindlimb material are also known, but only some of the latter was 
illustrated and only in anterior view.

Anyway, I ran it in PAUP, using HSearch.  The results were-

Tree length = 1418
Consistency index (CI) = 0.3505
Homoplasy index (HI) = 0.6495
Retention index (RI) = 0.6375

--+--allzero
  |--Herrerasauridae
  `--+--Prosauropoda
     `--+--+--+--Dilophosaurus
        |  |  `--Zupaysaurus
        |  `--+--Elaphrosaurus
        |     `--Coelophysidae
        `--+--+--Ceratosaurus
           |  `--+--Abelisaurus
           |     `--Carnotaurus
           `--+--+--Piatnitzkysaurus
              |  `--Torvosaurinae
              `--+--Megalosaurus
                 `--+--+--"Megalosaurus" hesperis
                    |  `--+--Eustreptospondylus
                    |     `--Spinosauridae
                    `--+--Afrovenator
                       `--+--"Carnosauria"
                          `--"Coelurosauria"

Note, I put Carnosauria and Coelurosauria in quotes only because I didn't 
wish to type out their entire tree as well, which was the same as it was in 
Holtz's original paper anyway, so I saw it as rather pointless.

Some rather interesting developments-
1. Zupaysaurus is not a tetanuran.
2. Ceratosauria is paraphyletic.
3. Megalosauridae (sensu Allain 2002) is paraphyletic!
4. Elaphrosaurus is a coelophysoid.
5. "Megalosaurus" hesperis and Eustreptospondylus are spinosauroids.
6. Spinosauroids are closer to avetheropods than "megalosauroids" (the 
opposite was the case in Holtz's original paper).

Character support for nodes will be provided on-list if requested.


Nick Gardner

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